12/11/06
Affordable Housing Crisis
 | By Jack Stout Read more of Jack's posts |
As Chairman of the Teton County Housing Authority, I’m obviously somewhat biased in my opinions of affordable housing. That being said, I am constantly amazed by people who live Teton County who are still opposed to affordable housing. The way I see it, if you still think there is no place for permanently deed restricted affordable housing in Teton County you are either:
- Financially set so you already own a house and don’t have to work (much less own a business) and now you want to close the gate behind you.
- Some sort of fanatical neo-con capitalist who falls asleep each night with a copy of Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” under your pillow. (See: Uncle Dick Cheney)
- An idiot.
- All of the above
The fact is that the real estate prices in Jackson Hole have become out of reach to most of the people who live and work here and those people, the fabric of this fantastic community, are leaving. And no one is taking their place. From a very insensitive business standpoint, we’re quickly heading into a crisis because there are no workers. Just about every business in town needs employees. However, that is not the real problem. The problem is that if we don’t do more, Jackson is going to be full of rich white people, an honestly that sounds pretty depressing to me. As Teton Valley and Star Valley continue to explode economically, we’re going to see fewer and fewer people willing to commute to Jackson to work. Can you blame them? I can’t. We need to create housing for our people. If you still don’t think there’s a demand, the Housing Authority has received 223 applications for the latest affordable housing development. There are only 36 homes available. It’s a serious problem and will continue to get worse unless more is done.
If you're someone who thinks the JHMR seems to always shoot itself in the foot when actually trying to do the right thing, listen to this from Major League Baseball. MLB announced the inaugural “Civil Rights” game to be played between the Cardinals and INDIANS! Surely they could have come up with one of the other 29 teams that don’t have a racially offensive mascot. Call me crazy, but I don’t think they want the Association of Native Americans picketing outside their first annual “civil rights game”. It’s like serving veal at a PETA rally.
Here’s a shot of the new restaurant at the top of the Gondola. While I think this place is going to be awesome starting around Valentines Day, especially hanging out on the SE facing deck, a Christmas opening (for the downstairs only) may be a little ambitious. You decide.
Real Estate:
1br/1ba Berry Patch unit at the JHRC sold for $354,000
5br/5ba 4500 sq. ft on .54 acres in Indian Trails listed at $2,000,000, sold for $1,750,000
560 sq. ft. studio apt. in Teton Village listed for $337,000, under contract in six days. Amazing.
I get the feeling we're going to see some sizzle in the Teton Village market very soon. Just a feeling.
Looks like snow all week. This is good.
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Now, I may be an idiot, or maybe even all of the above, but it is hard for me to understand why the solution to workers being unable to afford to live in Jackson is something other than paying the workers more. I don't see why there needs to be subsidized housing provided by the government when the only thing holding the workers back from affording real estate is that they don't make enough money to do so.
Now, in some places, businesses cannot afford to pay their workers higher wages, because they cannot successfully pass along those costs to their customers or clients. But if the people who live in Jackson can afford extremely expensive real estate, why not charge them $20 for a hamburger?
Now you might say, well, if Restaurant X charges $20 for a hamburger (and pays its workers $20/hour), and Restaurant Y charges $10 for a hamburger (and pays its workers $10/hour), then all the customers will go to Restaurant Y and Restaurant X will go out of business (and therefore will not pay and charge $20 in the first place).
But that simply contradicts the whole premise of your post. You say that “we’re quickly heading into a crisis because there are no workers.” Thus, in the hypothetical example above, it will be Restaurant Y that will go out of business, not Restaurant X, because Restaurant Y will not have any workers that are willing to work there, and will simply stop functioning. All the workers will choose to go work for Restaurant Y. This analysis, by the way, ignores the fact that Restaurant X can market its $20 hamburgers as “fair trade” burgers, and attract socially conscious Jacksonians who value “fair trade” over cheap hamburgers.
Furthermore, this idea of paying higher wages avoids the tremendous transaction costs of higher taxes going into government just so that money can come right back out again in the form of housing subsidies.
And the point of their being tremendous demand for subsidized “affordable housing” is a red herring. Everyone loves free money. I know I do. If someone offered to pay half my rent or mortgage payment, I would send in an application too.
Seriously, maybe I'm missing something in your argument, and I admit that I read the Wall Street Journal with some regularity, but the “crisis” of no workers seems to have an obvious solution, i.e., offer them higher wages. They will come, and they will stay, and they will be able to afford to live there.